Do you like waking up early? Or are you more of a night person? Though I don’t classify myself as a “morning person" by any means, there is something I enjoy about waking up early. Today, for instance, I woke up at 7:00, an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off. This happens occasionally. I wake up, check the alarm on my phone, and find I have beat the clock yet again.When this happens, it’s hard for me to go back to sleep.

As you can imagine, this made early Christmas morning hard to bear when I was younger. Getting to sleep on Christmas Eve Night was difficult because I was so busy thinking about opening my presents.

This presented a problem to my parents, however, as my mom would often check to see if I was sleeping and then my dad would carry all the hidden presents down to the tree. So of course they wanted me to be asleep.

It was nearly impossible to sleep. I would stare at the ceiling for hours, waiting until the clock struck at least 4:30 a.m. Then I would jump out of bed and wake everyone up for “Present Time.”

What do I do when I wake up early on days other than Christmas? Well, it simply depends. This morning, I wrote this week’s article on something I often think about: early mornings.

As a writer, I have favorite times of day when I like to work on stories. The best time for writing is in the morning or right before I go to sleep. At these times, my mind flows with new ideas, untainted by thoughts of daily activities or class assignments.

One time before I fell asleep, a great story idea came to me and I instantly sat up and grabbed my laptop to type the idea down. Another time when I struggled to write a specific paragraph of an essay, I woke up early, grabbed my laptop, headed to breakfast and wrote everything down as I ate. And I found myself more productive.

This week, I challenge you to think about your favorite time of day. Why is it your favorite time of day? For those of you who have hobbies, does your favorite time of day and your “hobby time” match up? Check it out and find out for yourself, you may actually be surprised.